Did John Broder think that in a car as sophisticated as the Tesla they wouldn't keep event the simplest of logs? My home router keeps more detail than it took to debunk this story. When I'm 30 miles from stranded my far less sophisticated Volt starts nagging and the Nav system offers "Plot a course to the nearest refueling point?" If you ignore this for half an hour, I assume you run out of gas. I'll never know.

Fake news enthusiasts should probably form a club so they can bounce ideas off one another and prevent embarrassingly weak lies from getting into print. It makes them all look... lame.

Yes, there's a loud and large lobby of anti wind, anti solar and anti electric car types out there furiously churning up as much FUD-mud as possible, hurling around accusations and insinuations as quickly as they can wheel them out. Lies and misdirection. The only question is whether it's a real grassroots effort from the genuinely misinformed or a directed public opinion massaging effort. My guess is a healthy combination of the two, particularly because these types will never ever admit they were wrong and will never ever stop arguing.

No problem. The BBC will hire him in a heartbeat. They, too, seem to have tarted up electric car reviews as well.

...or NBC. On their "Dateline NBC" show they were trying to show how 'dangerous' Chevrolet pickup trucks were. So they rigged the truck with explosives to make it appear as if the gas tank had ruptured (which it had not.)

But it also is somewhat onerous that Musk could get that much information, damning or not. I think that tracking that deeply is an invasion of privacy.... although it's a double-edged sword at this rate.

TFA states that ever since the Top Gear thing, they've put data loggers in all the cars they send to the media to review, precisely to avoid the kind of situation that happened with dishonest reporters.

Production vehicies will probably have similar data loggers, but with less data captured (akin to the black boxes that exist in practically every car sold today). Though, I'd also guess a modern vehicle today has that capability as well through their black boxes. Especially since they practically all have built-in satnavs.

âoeAlthough Tesla say it will do 200 miles we have worked out that on our track it will run out after just 55 miles and if it does run out, it is not a quick job to charge it up again,â Clarkson said in commentary.

Note the weasel words "calculated", meaning they did not test it.

Couple of staged shots? They pushed the car back to the garage claiming it ran out of juice. So basically the biggest scene was staged. What part was not staged? A lap or two?

No, they did not.http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/04/top-gear-responds-to-teslas-lawsuit/ [wired.com]1. We never said that the Teslaâ(TM)s true range is only 55 miles, as opposed to their own claim of 211 [Autopia: Actually, Tesla claims 245 for the Roadster], or that it had actually ran out of charge. In the film our actual words were: âoeWe calculated that on our track it would run out after 55 miles.â The first point here is that the track is where we do our tests of sports cars and supercars, as has happened ever since Top Gear existed. This is where cars are driven fast and hard, and since Tesla calls its roadster âoeThe Supercar. Redefinedâ it seemed pretty logical to us that the right test was a track test. The second point is that the figure of 55 miles came not from our heads, but from Teslaâ(TM)s boffins in California. They looked at the data from that car and calculated that, driven hard on our track, it would have a range of 55 miles.

Reputable? Top Gear? Are you high? Have your seen the India special? I love the show, but it is fake as hell.

Tesla might be exaggerating the milage that is no reason others should be going to the other extreme.

Also, why would he try to tarnish this car? He doesn't appear to own an oil company.

Could be as simple as page views. A story saying the car doesn't perform as advertised generates a lot more interest than one saying "yep, everything worked as expected." Just like Top Gear did a while back. Of course, I stopped expecting Top Gear to be reliable a while back and now just enjoy it as pure entertainment (which it really is), but this guy pretended to be writing a genuine news story.

Top Gear implicitly presents themselves as reviewers. They never state, unless they are being sued, that they are faking. In the Tesla case, they admitted the shot of the Tesla towed with dead batteries was a fake. They had scripted the battery failure. Their excuse? It's just a TV show, duh.

They weren't found "innocent". The judge said his court wasn't there to judge truthfulness, only liability for financial damage and a case for libel. He found the show non-libelous, and he, somehow, determined Tesla took no monetary damage from the show.

I don't watch Top Gear. I don't understand the purpose of faked reviews. People do take it seriously.

And they race sports cars against people on bicycles and bobsleds. Play conkers with caravans. Build their own boat-cars. And launch rocket powered cars off of ski lifts...

They put cars through absurd challenges, the scoring is completely arbitrary and they usually cheat.

They negatively review the Porsche Cayman because "people who drive it know its because they can't afford a 911". They rated the Ford GT 'seriously uncool' simply because one of them owns one. They dislike french cars for being french, American cars for being built for Americans, and if a Ferrari breaks down on the show, all is forgiven because you don't buy a Ferrari for reliability anyway...

Its a great show, and I enjoy it tremendously.

But you have to watch it the way one watches The Daily Show or The Colbert Report; in that there is a great deal of truth and even insight on display if you know how to recognize it, but if you take it too seriously you are just going to make a complete ass of yourself.

The key phrase there is "as much." It turns out that conservatives edge out liberals in their support of censorship by a fairly narrow margin [volokh.com]. In my experience, there's also a big difference between the types of ideological control that the two groups would enact, with liberals being more commonly in favor of, for example, odious "hate speech" laws and compulsory "diversity" training.

"lefties don't like authoritarianism as much"
Say what? Authoritarianism is a whole different spectrum from left/right. Communist dictatorships are as lefty as left can be. They're also authoritarian up the wazoo. Fascist dictatorships are as righty as right can be and also authoritarian up the wazoo. And on the other hand, you have anarchists on both sides - radical individualist righty anarchists, and radical collectivist nobody-owns-anything lefty anarchists.

Funny though how they only seem to feel the need to make shit up when it comes to electric cars.

Imagine if the reviewer had, instead, written about the latest Ford/GM/Chrysler Crossover, and announced that it was barely able to make it on the road before running out of fuel, oil, and R134a refrigerant for the A/C.

That would also have gotten them some eyeballs.

I think bias has a lot to do with this. Half the country thinks that the incremental cost of each Chevy Volt is about $50k because the anti-electric mob performed a dubious calculation that included sunk costs divided by total units sold early on in the car's history (you have to wonder why Apple ever made the iPod, as by these guys calculations the first few hundred cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make...) and it's become a thing, especially in the automotive industry, to just pretend that the technology is attrociously bad.

No wonder Tesla Motors is upset. They're trying something new, in the process trying to make the world a better place (yes, I know they're also out to make money, but they could make a luxury car with fewer acceptance problems if they just stuck a six cylinder engine in it, and make a lot more money as a result), and they're being pissed all over by irrational jackasses who are more obsessed with upsetting environmentalists than they are with actually enjoying themselves or being happy.

The really sad part is that even without the logs, his own story doesn't add up. He plainly states that he left Milford with a displayed range of 32 miles and ran out of power at 52 miles, then claims that actual range was SHORTER than the projected range.

I would typically be very skeptical of a review rebuttal from a company, but given that and the detailed data Musk provided, I'm convinced the 'review' was a hatchet job.

Motor Trend named the Chevy Vega the car of the year in 1971. Car and Driver named the Renault Alliance as one of 1983's 10 best cars. In 1985 the Ford Merkur also made this list. You might enjoy this [caranddriver.com].

Of course Elon has proof to back up his claims. He is the guy behind that car after all. And if his car used pink unicorns, he'd have proof of their existence.

When I see an unbiased third party do the test - like Consumer Reports or Motor Trend - then I'll take what has to be said seriously. Until then, I'll treat everything with skepticism.

Considering how easy it is to monitor vehicle state, functions and location with a few added gadgets, all of which we have been hearing are being placed in some rental cars, beginning a few years ago, never mind this car is built around the corner from Silicon Valley Broder assumed they wouldn't be watching. Here's an education for future journos, keep it honest and keep your job.

Anyone who is surprised to see this from a newspaper shouldn't be. They aren't in the business of telling the news - they're in the business of selling papers and putting advertising in front of eyeballs.

Musk was smart -- the logs don't lie, and they don't jibe with what the reporter said. Now, this was in print, in the new York Times -- I'd be fascinated to have seen the same story reported with in-car cameras. I have a funny feeling it would turn out differently.

And for Top Gear to film a bunch of people pushing the Tesla they were test-driving -- implying that it had run out of go, when in fact it still had some juice left -- that's just rotten. Entertaining TV, but crummy journalism, and cheap.

They are selling them faster than they can make them and it has received spectacular reviews from the automotive press--or at least any automotive press that hadn't already made up their minds that "electric cars suck". This is a car which is more than competitive within its segment (luxury sports sedan). It's just a matter of time until the technology becomes more affordable and trickles down into mass market segments.

It's absurd to claim that electric cars won't be practical until we have fusion reactors when they are clearly practical in some segments today.

You sound like the sad, pathetic curmudgeons who crap on any trans-formative new technology--I'm sure some jackass said the same things about "horseless carriages" at the time. Someday soon you will be just as wrong and just as irrelevant.

Theory: Broder didn't realize the logging capabilities of the car, and when the Model S' software ui initially supported his internal baises he took liberties with the truth. By "documenting" his experience through Tesla support he attempted to falsely add credence to what would be a traffic generating, "anti-electric" review masked in the journalistic repute of the NYT.

Firstly, all of Broder's excessive winging about the cold weather (I think) was designed to subtly imply that the Model S doesn't work in the cold. You future buyer, will be cold and your car will break. This is why Musk had to address the cold weather link directly in the evidence blog posting.

Secondly. Broder likely couldn't have fathomed that every parameter in the car was being logged. Very specific details add credibility and character to a story. They make the author appear diligent, and one who gives great attention to detail. In the past such details were a "literary tool used to bend the story. Now thanks to data driven engineering words and truth in such matters should align more closely.

Lastly. For a man who may or may not have a bias against electric vehicles (cars at least), the observation that "the estimated range was falling faster than miles were accumulating" at the outset of the author's journey might have set the tone of the coming review. With all the incessant calls to Tesla support to document all the "trouble", Broder had plenty of documentation to support his (what was IMHO a) journalistic malignment. This angle also had the added benefit of generating views for NYT - plus through the courtesy of Tesla arranging a tow - the money shot.

Unless these logs were doctored (unlikely), then Broder lied. However, the one claim of Broder's that Tesla doesn't try to debunk is the loss of charge from overnight cold. Looking at the graphs, somewhere around mile 400, there is a sudden drop in charge from ~45% to ~38%, with a corresponding drop in estimated range from ~80 miles to ~20 miles (the two are not linearly related, presumably because of the intrincacies of the charge/discharge curve being nonlinear). This seems to correspond to what Broder said, that by letting the car sit in the cold, it lost 2/3 of its range.

This is the one negative thing that may have been true in the NYTimes story. Of course, now that Broder has ruined his credibility, even that must be called into question (did he leave it running in a parking spot for a few hours with the heater blasting?... actually there is a spike in the 'cabin temperature' right at that point...). As someone actually interested in electric cars, that's the kind of question I would like a proper answer to. So, it would have been nice for Tesla to address it (beyond just saying that they have lots of sales in frigid countries).

Not a day goes by that some one says "I did this" or "I did that" and the end result is "I didn't work". Yet going back to a nice log file in fact shows "you didn't do that" and "you actually did this, causing your issue". I'm not sure when people will learn that you cannot lie about what you did when everything you do is logged, but its awesome to point it out when they flat out do and you have the evidence.

The plots show a precipitous drop in charge level around the 400 mile mark that doesn't match the constant discharge slopes elsewhere. The only thing that happened at that time was the temperature increasing from 70F to 75F. It seems odd that at 35% charge the heaters would have that effect when nothing seemed to happen at other times with the temp above 74F.

The plots show a precipitous drop in charge level around the 400 mile mark that doesn't match the constant discharge slopes elsewhere. The only thing that happened at that time was the temperature increasing from 70F to 75F. It seems odd that at 35% charge the heaters would have that effect when nothing seemed to happen at other times with the temp above 74F.

I own an electric car (a Mitsubishi Miev in fact), and the heater sucks down a tremendous amount of power. The dash power draw meter indicates the total draw on the batteries, and in very cold weather, the heater draws as much power as cruising at 30 mph. If you sit in a parking lot for two hours with the heater set to 74 degrees (in 20 degree weather), you will use the same amount of power as driving 60 miles. Takes quite a chunk out of my battery life. It also happens to be a cheap and easy trick for messing with the range estimator on an electric car.

There is a simple way to prove it. Have someone else who is acceptable to both NYT and Tesla motors repeat the trip with the following differences;1. Video the whole trip.2. Charge to full at each stop.Compare the logs from both trips and report the results. Let the readers decide who is telling the truth. How about we have more reporters telling the facts and fewer commentators telling us how to think.

The NYTimes writer drove in circles to draw the battery down!!!
That pretty much clinches it for me to take Tesla's side. And I believe the NYTimes altered the story slightly between print time and what was on the internet on Tuesday. I'll have to find the print copy again to see what they changed. Here's a quote from Elon Musk's rebuttal statement:

The above helps explain a unique peculiarity at the end of the second leg of Broder's trip. When he first reached our Milford, Connecticut Supercharger, having driven the car hard and after taking an unplanned detour through downtown Manhattan to give his brother a ride, the display said "0 miles remaining." Instead of plugging in the car, he drove in circles for over half a mile in a tiny, 100-space parking lot. When the Model S valiantly refused to die, he eventually plugged it in. On the later legs, it is clear Broder was determined not to be foiled again.

I drove more than 100 miles below 55 on cruise control to conserve power.

Yet the graphic presented by Elon Musk ( http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/speeddistance0.jpg [teslamotors.com] ) of speed vs. distance clearly shows that Broder's statement is false, unless Elon Musk is presenting false data logs. Of course, one possible explanation could be an uncalibrated speedometer, which showed Broder the numbers he wrote in his article. But considering the digital-ness of this fancy-schmancy electric car, I expect that the display is a digital display of speed and that the console speed displayed actually matches the speeds logged and graphed by Musk.. Now little things lke "I but the climate control to low at 182 miles" when he really did it at 212 miles (approximately eyeballed by me) which would have seemed like picking at details and mistakes takes on a sadder dirtier note of trying to spin the story the way he wanted it to turn out.:>(
How sad for the nytimes if Elon Musk's allegations turn out to be true and Broder lied.

After Musk's initial complaint, the Times doubled-down and defended their report as accurate, and then Musk presented this quantitative evidence. Someone at the Times is going to be very pissed with Mr. Broder if Tesla's data stand up to scrutiny.

I love logs like these, since they let you fact check both sides. They paint a pretty damning picture when you take them with Tesla's notes, but Tesla's notes are rather one sided and skip some obvious facts that they'd rather ignore but which are plain for all to see. Similarly, Broder's account was clearly sensationalized a bit in various parts, though not in all of the ways that Tesla claims. For instance:

1) The cabin temperature logs Tesla provides have a note saying that Broder turned up the temperature at the 182 mile mark when he claimed he turned it down. If we read the original article, we see that Broder merely mentions having noticed a decreased reported range at the 182 mile mark (114 miles from start + 68 since charge), but he never said he decreased his speed or turned down the heater at that exact time. What we see in the logs is that he did turn up the heater slightly around that time, but very shortly thereafter he turned it down to its lowest setting, exactly as he claimed. If you're looking at the logs, it's easy to spot the deep valleys where he did what he said he did at about the time that he said he did it.

2) Similarly, if you compare the graphs, you'll see that at about the time he dropped his heating down to its lowest setting, his speed also dropped down to around 54 miles per hour, again, as he claimed. That said, he seemed to imply in the article that he maintained that speed for quite some time. What the logs show is that he only maintained that speed for a short period of time, before resuming his typical driving habits that had him in the mid-60s for his speed. He conveniently neglected to mention how long he maintained that speed, leaving it to the reader to assume that he maintained it until his next stop, which was untrue.

3) Tesla disputes the time that Broder claims he spent charging at Milford (the Times' picture claimed 58 minutes, Broder's article says "nearly an hour", but Tesla claims 47 minutes). It's possible this was a simple case of misunderstanding, where he was in the service station for 58 minutes (including the rather shady 5 minutes driving around the lot to seemingly try and kill the battery) but actually only spent 47 minutes charging. Either way, there's no dispute that his range read 185 miles when he stopped charging the car before it was done. Tesla suggests that it's his fault for not charging it to full, even though the reported range was 60 miles greater than what was necessary to reach his next stop.

4) If you look at the logs showing the reported range, you'll see a sudden drop in range of about 50 miles at the 400 mile mark. Broder claimed that the reported range went from 79 miles to 25 miles overnight, which is exactly what the logs show. Tesla doesn't make a point of highlighting that blip in the logs, to say the least. We also see that Broder once again turned his thermostat to an extremely low setting, though the logs do not support his claim that he limped along at 45 miles per hour (though he did slow down quite a bit...maybe he made a typo when meaning to say 54 miles per hour?).

5) Broder never mentions in the article what the estimated range was after his last stop, instead merely saying that "after an hour they [Tesla] cleared me to resume the trip". Since he says he woke up a Tesla official on the west coats to ask for instructions and this was not his scheduled stop, it's quite possible he got someone half-asleep or unfamiliar with the fact that he had stopped at a non-Supercharger station, meaning that they cleared him after the hour that the Supercharger would have taken, rather than the several hours necessary at the station he was at. Either way, he was definitively not charged enough (which he clearly knew), since both Musk's notes and the Times' own map indicate that he had around 32-35 miles of reported range after he had charged, which was nowhere close to the 51 necessary to reach his destination.

Long story short, both sides are trying to spin the facts in their favor. As far as I can tell,

They apparently fudged a test of the vehicle to make it seem like it went from having a decent charge to being completely dead within a very short timeframe. I think it was Clarkson driving, and he gave a very bad review of the car.

No. All they did was save themselves time.Tesla's engineers told them the estimated range they'd get on the Top Gear track.Top Gear drove a few laps, but did not drive to the maximum range they were quoted.

They then ACTED as if they drove that distance, and proceeded to show viewers what would have happened had they driven the distance Tesla told them the car would go. There was no deception, all they did was act like they drove it until it died so they could then show the problems with the car. Namely, the PRIMARY problem, that running out of fuel isn't just a hike with a jerrycan to fix.

What, you think only going a few laps around the track is bad? That's really not different from any other supercar. That's not the bad side to the Tesla. The bad side is that if you drain the battery, you're pretty much fucked. Call the tow truck, you're not driving again any time soon.

Top Gear has never shown every single lap a car would drive before it went dry, because it's TV and that would be boring to watch. They never claimed the range would be any less than what Tesla's engineers calculated it would be -- yeah, they actually simply *assumed Tesla was right* about the range.

Not to mention, they are usually extremely biased against American cars.

Mind you, there are a lot of not great things about American cars, but TGUK would try to convince you that they are fueled by eating babies alive, and could have their efficiency rated at babies-per-mile.

Top Gear had a pre-scripted show, where they decided in the end that the Tesla would run out of power, so they had a shot of their people pushing the car, even though it still had plenty of power in its batteries. Top Gear claimed it was OK doing this, because they were showing something that could happen, even though it didn't.

They showed what would almost certainly happen in reality, under a given set of circumstances.

However, what with TV production schedules, budgets etc. (and probably not wanting to really push the car all the way back to the hangar) they acted it out, rather than actually driving the car until it turned into a brick on wheels.

In other news, food 'prepared' on cookery shows is probably stone cold and dried to a husk by the time the guests taste it and obediently go 'yum'. The windows behind TV presenters on news shows are added in post-production. When someone uses a phone on TV, even in a documentary, there isn't actually someone on the other end. When you see an interview, unless its actually live, the interviewer has probably re-recorded his side of the conversation after the fact, and the editor has probably cut out a load of 'ums' and 'ers' from the guest's responses.

To summarise - if you see it on TV it has probably been staged somehow. The issue is whether the claims are honest.

Being that you actually have to turn this feature on yourself, I'd say that amounts to prior consent...

The Top Gear scam, as admitted by Top Gear's producers, was that they had already decided on the result AND written the script before receiving the vehicles. Yes, it's entertainment, yes I love the show too, and yes, Tesla's response wasn't the greatest (lawsuit subsequently thrown out for legal technicalities despite judge confirming intentional lies by Top Gear), but come on they were presenting a review as if it was a result of testing, not of scripting...

Kinda dumb. They weren't reviewing its range, just the car, and running out of power is something you can realistically expect. Even if you don't drain it down to the point you have to push it into the garage, it's STILL a long wait until you can drive it again.

What part of that is not true? Should they NOT have shown the primary downside to the Tesla and other electrics? Would ignoring the most serious flaw of an item be the more honest way of reviewing it?

Top Gear's a entertainment primarily and review secondarily, but jesus christ. You're tilting at them for.. actually touching on the negative points of something they were reviewing. Good god. That's what is supposed to happen.

They didn't say the Tesla's range was any less than what Tesla's engineers told them it would be, they didn't say it would take 3 days to charge, they didn't say you have to charge it with the soul of a murdered street urchin.

They just pretended they drove 2 or 3 laps that we didn't see, and proceeded from that point as if those laps had been driven.

Tesla monitors cars remotely now to warn owners who are in danger of bricking the batteries by not keeping them charged. And while you might ask whether you can trust them not to monitor where you go if you buy a car from them, you should certainly expect them to use the capability if it's THEIR test car and you're writing a review of it.

Musk is not claiming that the car still had a charge. If you RTFS you'd see that the accusation is that the reporter purposely did not charge the car and that is why it ran out of electricity. This occurred after behavior was logged that appeared to indicate an attempt to drive the car in circles in a parking lot until it died. When that failed, it was minimally charged and driven until it died on the road. Assuming the Tesla data is accurate, it doesn't disagree with your claims from the tow company and there's no reason to think there's anything more to it than what Musk describes.

Read the blog post, it takes 2 minutes. He did run out of charge, in fact he KNEW he was going to run out of charge because he took a 61 mile drive with a 32 mile reading on the charge indicator. During that drive he drove past several charging stations.

He also drove around in circles in a parking lot trying to make it run out of juice at one point.

The writer had an agenda, and he should have known they would log the data and prove him a liar. Musk was incensed by the Top Gear article and proclaimed that he would never let a journalist have a car without logging enabled.

Frankly the writer of the article should be fired, this evidence is very damning.

Having the brake default to "on" when the battery is dead is a safety engineering issue. Just like in a truck you need air pressure to take the brakes OFF, not to apply them. If the battery fails and the emergency brake is the only thing keeping a car parked on a hill, you want the car to stay where it is. Now I will agree that there is probably a need for some sort of "manual release" that can be used by towing companies.

The brake isn't held on or off by electric power, because that would be illegal.

What happens is that a surprisingly small electric motor (about the size of an electric window motor) tensions up the perfectly ordinary mechanical handbrake mechanism through a screw jack. The friction of the screw is sufficient to stop the tension in the brake cables slackening it off.

This is pretty common on cars now, for some reason. I think they're fairly horrible to use and make hill starts difficult.

That Jalopnik article has since been updated, pointing out how both Musk and Broder could be correct.

UPDATE: A source who has seen the data logs explains how it's possible how Broder and Musk could both be truthful but sort of wrong. The high-voltage battery in the pack, allegedly, had enough power to move the car a much greater distance than needed to move the car onto a flatbed, maybe as far as five miles, but the 12V battery that powers the accessories and gets its juice from the high voltage battery shut down when Broder pulled into the service station.

When Broder decided to turn the car off, which was a mistake, the parking brake (operated by the 12V battery) was rendered unusable. If Broder was told not to turn the car off, it's his mistake. If Tesla told him to do it, or didn't inform him he shouldn't do it, then it's their mistake.

Musk will print your driving log, and you'll end up getting traffic tickets in the mail.

No.. no. I wont.Years ago I adopted a foolproof way of avoiding speeding fines; and one that keeps me and everybody around me safer; I simply obey speed limits.As your driving improves you might discover this secret too.

"the New York Times. They don't lie"
I think there is a bit of misplaced faith here. I would be wary of trusting *any* American news source, even one as famous as the New York Times.

Aside from potential dishonesty, the NYT employs reporters who routinely fail to have experts check their statements. Just read through the "Technology" section if you want examples (the most extreme examples can be found there). Like most American media, the NYT is desperate to get their story out there before their competitors; double checking facts and ensuring accurate statements are secondary objectives in the best case.

You can look at my comment history... I have a history of trust problems with corporate America, but in this case there are logs backing up the claims. The NYT has free access to those logs and if there is tampering then it IS going to be found.

What SHOULD have been done by the NYT here... they should have had video evidence of what they are saying. We're stuck with one reporter who has shown to have an anti-electric car bias and his word vs a log. It's not hard to see who has the burden of proof in this situation.

The pathetic complaint that the range is low is funny, because the vast majority of people never make use of the maximum range of their car. If you do, good for you! Just keep using a gas guzzler and shut up.

Read the linked story. That was just one of the lies Musk alleges the journalist wrote. The reason the journalist got stranded was because he didn't charge the car enough to actually do the intended journey. That's like putting a gallon of gas into a car to drive 100 miles.

>Let me get this straight: I can't drive 65 or turn up the heat without having to worry about getting stranded?

The Superchargers are 200 miles apart, but you can use regular chargers too. If you look at Tesla's blog post, there were chargers all over the place. You're not going to get stranded unless you're a dishonest reporter with a grudge against electric cars.

>It takes an hour to refill the thing, and I have to do it three times to drive 600 miles?

Drive 3 hours (200 miles at 65 mph), stop for charge and lunch. Drive another 3 hours, stop for an hour break. Drive another 3 hours, and you're at your destination, so let it charge up overnight.

If you're a trucker with a pee bottle that doesn't want to stop for anything, I'm sure this isn't great. For normal people, an hour break every 3 hours of driving is fine.

Clearly the car is intended for people that would not have a problem with three one-hour charging stops for a 600-mile trip. Clearly you are not one of those people, so I don't think we can answer your question.

Many people rarely take 600-mile trips. Of those that do, many would be fine with three one-hour charging stops. You can plan one or two stops around meals, for instance, to minimize the inconvenience. Those that need to make those trips and can't wait to charge will need to buy a different kind of car. No one is suggesting this type of electric car is appropriate for all purposes.

Many households with two working adults end up with two cars: a long-range large-capacity family vehicle and a smaller commuting vehicle. Electrics will dominate the latter use case before the former, for these reasons.

1. I can't feed my horseless carriage grass, it needs some special fuel that I can only get a special stations?2. I can't breed my horseless carriage to make more horseless carriages.3. It costs how much?!?!?

In looking over the logs, I'm having trouble finding places where Broder outright lied, and I see several places where Tesla takes some liberty with the facts as well. I detailed my points in another post further down, but suffice to say, Broder implied extended duration of events in a few cases where they didn't last, and Tesla made a few obviously incorrect assumptions that were convenient for their efforts to make Broder look bad.

For instance, in looking over Broder's account, he never provided an exact time for when he turned the heater down, merely saying that it occurred sometime after he noticed that the range had decreased faster than he expected. Tesla chose to assume that he turned the heater down at the exact time he reported seeing the range drop, so they painted him as a liar by showing how he turned up the heater around that time, while neglecting to point out that he clearly did turn the heater to its lowest setting a few minutes later. They conveniently ignored quite a few other facts like those that supported Broder's story or made them look bad (e.g. the overnight loss of 54 miles of range that Broder reported, which the logs support as having happened).

That said, Broder also claims that he dropped to 54 miles per hour and put the car on cruise control around the same time he turned down the heater, suggesting strongly that he maintained that speed until his next stop. What the logs show is that he did drop to around that speed for awhile...before speeding back up to his typical speed in the mid-60s for that leg of the trip. Again, it doesn't contradict his account, since he never actually said he maintained that speed, but it does show that his account was at least a bit disingenuous. Not enough for libel, but certainly enough to be shady.

Discrepancies like those abound in both accounts if you compare them against the actual logs. I went into a lot more detail in my other post [slashdot.org].